Performance that doesnt make sense
Gadzooks
Join Date: 2007-11-08 Member: 62860Members
Join Date: 2007-11-08 Member: 62860Members
So i was just doing some random testing of performance to try to see if I could make any sense of it.
There were places on the map where I would face a wall, and get 10 fps. using r_stats id see over 1000 draw calls, and 500,000 primatives.
Id turn and face the hive, and eggs, and other aliens running around, and the number of draws and primatives would drop by over half, and my FPS would shoot back up to 50 or so.
Staring at a wall should net me the best framerate i can get, not the other way around. It doesnt happen everywhere, but its that way all throughout the levels.
Another performance issue that doesnt make much sense to me.
Me vs 1 enemy in combat. My FPS goes from 50ish, down to 10-15.
vs
Me standing around 10+ other players in the ready room = 50 steady fps.
or
Me spectating 5+ players in combat = 50 fps
Just something for the devs to think about.
Performance will drive players away from this game faster than any balance issues or fancy features. Yes, its beta, which is why im not yelling about how it sucks, or how i want my money back. But being beta, now is the time to make sure these things get fixed BEFORE the game is OUT of beta. Patch after patch, and it doesnt seem like gameplay is any more smooth for me.
/Fingers crossed
There were places on the map where I would face a wall, and get 10 fps. using r_stats id see over 1000 draw calls, and 500,000 primatives.
Id turn and face the hive, and eggs, and other aliens running around, and the number of draws and primatives would drop by over half, and my FPS would shoot back up to 50 or so.
Staring at a wall should net me the best framerate i can get, not the other way around. It doesnt happen everywhere, but its that way all throughout the levels.
Another performance issue that doesnt make much sense to me.
Me vs 1 enemy in combat. My FPS goes from 50ish, down to 10-15.
vs
Me standing around 10+ other players in the ready room = 50 steady fps.
or
Me spectating 5+ players in combat = 50 fps
Just something for the devs to think about.
Performance will drive players away from this game faster than any balance issues or fancy features. Yes, its beta, which is why im not yelling about how it sucks, or how i want my money back. But being beta, now is the time to make sure these things get fixed BEFORE the game is OUT of beta. Patch after patch, and it doesnt seem like gameplay is any more smooth for me.
/Fingers crossed
Comments
And it's still a Alpha / Beta, far from launch. It's not going to release in 6 months, probably not even 12...it's far from launch, so they have time.
Also, post yer specs.
I have:
Q6600 @ 3.3GHZ
GTX470
4GB RAM
Plenty HDD Space
Windows 7 64-bit
And I get, on high, 1920 x 1200, 60 FPS usually ,lowering to 40-50 during large matches, and as low as 35 during combat. My rig would even be considered quite old, minus my GPU, so I think my performance is reasonable, as unoptimized as it is.
Staring at a wall gives you the best FPS? Oh wow, no way! I mean, that's totally not like it has far, far less to render, so system usage is decreased.
Devs need to have info given to them by beta testers so games dont leave beta with tons of problems.
And you read my post wrong. Staring at a wall often gives me the WORST fps.
As your sarcastic remark states "Staring at a wall gives you the best FPS? Oh wow, no way! I mean, that's totally not like it has far, far less to render, so system usage is decreased." it should give me BETTER fps.
Dont be so quick to slam someone for stating issues they have found during a beta. We all love NS, and are here to help the devs make NS2 a great game.
The devs have a great resource in those of us who have pre ordered the game, in that we can find bugs and problems with the game before it goes live. But if lots of us arent testing it because its near unplayable in its current state, then they are just wasting that resource.
Things that cant be tested well if performance keeps the game from being playable:
1. Gameplay mechanics
2. Gameplay Balance
3. Server stability
4. Bugs (like broken hitboxes, holes in maps, getting stuck in objects, etc etc)
and more.
A lot of the patch notes seem to focus on the above issues, which honestly dont matter to me or many others right now because we cant even play the game well enough to test these changes/fixes/additions.
maybe verify cache files, try different drivers (youd be surprised), try a different OS (dualboot if you want, i do.)
and check out cpu-z, speed fan, and prime95 for monitoring your cpu, heat, and stress testing, respectively.
you told me your specs already ingame and you shouldnt be having these problems. background apps? whats your available ram when just sitting at the desktop?
theres alot of potential answers, but start with eliminating the obvious ones i mentioned above first.
then, as they say, get back to me in the morning.
And I can play the game well enough, and my rig is old. I've played like 14 hours of it, not alot, but enough, and it's been enjoyable, sans the bugs. The things you mentioned above, #3 & #4, have alot to do with performance, you know?
max and the rest knows this, is working on it, but its not ready.
you just have to keep paitent :P
The devs have a great resource in those of us who have pre ordered the game, in that we can find bugs and problems with the game before it goes live. But if lots of us arent testing it because its near unplayable in its current state, then they are just wasting that resource.
Things that cant be tested well if performance keeps the game from being playable:
1. Gameplay mechanics
2. Gameplay Balance
3. Server stability
4. Bugs (like broken hitboxes, holes in maps, getting stuck in objects, etc etc)
and more.
A lot of the patch notes seem to focus on the above issues, which honestly dont matter to me or many others right now because we cant even play the game well enough to test these changes/fixes/additions.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i agree with u guys but i bought this game almost a week and i'm getting tired of this performace, if just get some better would be good is not far to be ok.... and fix memory problem
but. let's wait... it's all we can
Oh damnit, 12months ???? :'( nooooooooo!!
there is prolly a year+ of work before RC for NS2, there not done working with game-play and there still adding engine features so you can really effectively work on optimization till there is a feature lock.
Many of the odd framerate drops that you experience, such as looking at a wall, or in random spots in a map are due to the current occlusion system, which can cause a lot of random drawing of map geometry that is not visible. Max is working on the new occlusion system now, which will hopefully make the overall framerate a little more consistent, without as many drops.
The game is going to get where it needs to, on the performance side, but it will still take some time, and meanwhile we are going to continue to release patches that have new gameplay features, and bug fixes, along with the sometimes small and sometimes large, optimizations.
--Cory
That's because it's drawing half the freaking map. Use r_wireframe to see what it is actually drawing.
Many of the odd framerate drops that you experience, such as looking at a wall, or in random spots in a map are due to the current occlusion system, which can cause a lot of random drawing of map geometry that is not visible. Max is working on the new occlusion system now, which will hopefully make the overall framerate a little more consistent, without as many drops.
The game is going to get where it needs to, on the performance side, but it will still take some time, and meanwhile we are going to continue to release patches that have new gameplay features, and bug fixes, along with the sometimes small and sometimes large, optimizations.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good to hear
Just a suggestion then. I (and possibly many others) would like to better test these new gameplay features. However, to do so, the game needs to run smoother.<b> Please include more options in the video settings</b> to enable/disable many of the graphical "wonders" of the game so that the game can run smooth enough for me to actually test the other features. As of right now, the "horribly awful" setting really doesnt look that horribly awful which means there are still a lot of FPS reducing graphical things going on. And yes, im aware of bloom false and shadows false (shadows false doesnt seem to do anything). Doing this sooner, rather than closer to release, would allow us to side step possibly many of the performance hindering aspects of the beta test, allowing us to better give feedback and bug reports on the rest of the game.
max and the rest knows this, is working on it, but its not ready.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They've been saying that for so long I've actually forgotten how long it's been.
Then again, I don't understand the current broken occlusion stuff, I could be wrong.
r_shadow / shadows false, type that.
r_flash false
Type that, you've done what you can, basically. They actually have much more intensive graphical options to turn on yet. r_atmospherics for example, will kill your FPS, though it's a nice effect.
Not much they can do now...this is a glorified alpha man, you need to understand this...the devs are very aware of everything you've been telling them; they've heard it about 200x by now.
"something awful" looks awful, it looks like a 2002-2003 game man, you really can't go lower than that. My rig is out-dated, as I've said, and I can manage high @ 1920 x 1200 and the lowest I go is 35 in the commanders seat.
Is it just the ping indicators that are broken ? It would be nice to have something like net_graph working.
Interesting how "Something awful" still looks better than the best graphics in NS1.
That tells me there are still performance hindering graphic options that can be disabled. Post processing, certain lighting effects, shadows (r_shadows false does nothing it seems). texture resolution, texture filtering, etc etc.
All im requesting is that the options be put in. If you disagree, thats your opinion, but i dont think these forums are the place you should go to troll those who think differently.
Is it just the ping indicators that are broken ? It would be nice to have something like net_graph working.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
could be choke on that server? did you watch that tick rate consistently? i've noticed similar incidences and it was usually on a 10 player slot server, leading me to believe it was the inadequate hardware the server was running on that caused the occasional banding.
Dont forget it was a 1 man job that had to fix the bugs first so we can actually play without major bugs.
Now they have time for the big things like Animation System and OC-System aaaand they hired a 2. Engine Programer!
Btw when does the new UWE employer introduces himself or did I missed something?
That tells me there are still performance hindering graphic options that can be disabled. Post processing, certain lighting effects, shadows (r_shadows false does nothing it seems). texture resolution, texture filtering, etc etc.
All im requesting is that the options be put in. If you disagree, thats your opinion, but i dont think these forums are the place you should go to troll those who think differently.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It'll take extra time they could fix something worthwhile. Honestly, lowering settings won't really affect your performance much at this point.
And I'd hope it looks better than NS1, NS1 is built off a Gldsrc, which was a modified Quake II engine. So around 1997, even though Gldsrc can be pushed far. There is only so low an Engine can go...this is a custom Engine, Spark, it's not going to look like NS1, no matter what you do. Different lighting system, different engine entirely...
If it was just a case of performance, the algorithm might take a long long time, but will eventually come out with the correct result that the things behind the wall shouldn't be rendered. But instead it's just coming out with the wrong result. It's like the object hierarchy is being constructed wrong or, seeing as it's dynamic, perhaps being corrupted (hence performance drop?). Wish the engine source was available to us :P
Tickrates were stable, and I tried different servers (an empty one), and it didn't change anything. But my internet was really bad at some point yesterday, so I guess it's just the ping indicators that do not work.
your # drawing particles skyrockets
occulation requests skirockets
and fps goes to nothing...
so wondering if its some network issue that is causing the wrong 'response' from server when trying to calculate what to render
If it was just a case of performance, the algorithm might take a long long time, but will eventually come out with the correct result that the things behind the wall shouldn't be rendered. But instead it's just coming out with the wrong result. It's like the object hierarchy is being constructed wrong or, seeing as it's dynamic, perhaps being corrupted (hence performance drop?). Wish the engine source was available to us :P<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i guess that is why it has been recoded. We don't know if it will still use CHC+ or not, but at least it will be a new code.